A Month in the Life of the Launching Author

Today marks one month since May 31, the official publication date of my new novel The Oakdale Dinner Club, and one month since I started my residency here at Open Book Toronto.

Within the month of June, I:

- wrote and posted 16 blog posts (whew!), some instructional, some confessional, and some about what to eat, because food is important
- went to my first speaking engagement on behalf of the book, where I made jokes to a receptive audience and also sold some books
- held a successful book launch party, with shots and country line dancing, yeehaw
- had a a cautionary but humourous post I wrote about book launches go not exactly viral, but it did get tweeted about, shared, and linked to by some actual strangers
- saw the book get the full page critical (but not too critical) treatment in the National Post, as part of the National Post Afterword Reading Society, which, yay: publicity!
- started recapping a TV series (Suits) for fun, and developed a new appreciation for the hard work done by people who write recaps all season long, under deadline
- received invites to appear at two fall literary festivals (woo!)
- had the book reviewed in two important trade publications: Publishers Weekly and Quill & Quire, and got flattering pull-quotes from each review (woo and whew)

What I didn’t do in that busy month was much reading, or any fiction writing. That’s what the rest of the summer will be for: I’m doing two readings in July – one at the Plasticine Poetry Reading Series in Toronto, one at the Leacock Festival in Orillia – and I plan to spend the rest of the time going through the stack of newspapers and magazines that have piled up, cracking open some new novels I’ve picked out that sound engrossing and entertaining, and trying to write some fiction. A chapter of a novel I’ve been thinking about for some time would be a real accomplishment. Or a whole scene. A page? Hell, I can definitely commit to a few paragraphs.

In the meantime, thanks to Open Book Toronto for giving me the opportunity to hold forth in these pages, thanks to anyone who read my posts, and have a great rest of the summer!

 The views expressed in the Writer-in-Residence blogs are those held by the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Open Book: Toronto.